JAMES WILKES LTD

by Reg Aston

3. A trip round the works

Most of these photos, which are some of those I rescued
from a skip when the company was closing down, were taken in 1953 but
one or two may come from a few years later. They give some idea of
the company's works, at a time when they were expanding rapidly and were
at the forefront in the production of new types of work.

The General Office

Production Planning Office. The man standing centre
is Cyril Evans. The jobs to be done by each machine were listed in
strips on the panels to the right and the corresponding details were put
in the boxes below them.

left: the paper store for flat paper, which came in reams
(500 sheets). right: a small part of the reel warehouse. The
more Wilkes undertook in the way of continuous stationery, the more
reels were needed and eventually a very large warehouse was built to
house them.

Hand composing of type. There was always a call
for the skills of the hand compositor, no matter how automated printing
processes became. The compositor is Robert Evans, an original
Wilkes' employee from the Orchard days.

Putting composed pages, of type and blocks, into machine chases for
printing. On the right is Bernard Humphries, who was the longest
serving employee. He started with the firm when they were still in
the Orchard. On the left is Jan Klimovicz.

A Linotype machine, operated by Stan Fish, which set type
automatically from a keyboard. Wilkes also had Monotype machinery.

These are die stamping machines which produced the raised
(and very glossy) print you often saw used on letterheads, business
cards and the like, when you wanted an impressive, high class result.

Letterpress machines. The man in the white coat is the foreman,
Percy Cox.

Rotary printing machines - amongst the first installed in the UK.
Here they are equipped to trim reel edges to size. In the centre
is Harry Bowen and far right is Tom Moorhouse.

Paddy Heggarty stands next to his Heidelberg platen machine.

Harry Evans with a Heidelberg cylinder machine. This
was a Rolls Royce of a machine and provided high quality
printed forms.